New seasons of Apex Legends always bring with them new plot developments and narrative threads to tug at. In this season, for instance, a new haute couture-themed event has just gone live, and to promote the game’s latest premium cosmetics, Respawn has posted a set of four in-universe magazine covers, each featuring a different playable Legend in their new high-fashion digs. But a closer look reveals that each magazine also contains some pretty wild articles with the potential to have equally wild effects on the game’s storyline.

Once upon a time, I looked forward to these lore drops, because they always led to something good. But lately, they just make me sad. The narrative payoff isn’t there the way it used to be, so as much as I want to take these little lore tidbits seriously and get excited to see them explored during the lead-up to Season 26 (or during Season 26 itself), I just don’t enjoy Apex Legends lore drops the way I used to. Mainly because lately, we get fewer lore drops, and they aren’t executed with nearly as much mindblowingly cool finesse as they once were.

Let me take you back to the golden age of Apex Legends lore. It’s late January 2020. The world hasn’t yet fallen apart, and the current concern of the Apex Legends lorehounds on the /r/ApexLore subreddit is the identity of the next Legend to join the Apex Games. According to Respawn — which has created an official biography page on its website listing the new Legend’s in-game abilities, as is standard for all new Legend debuts — the next Legend will be James “the Forge” McCormick, an award-winning fighter with an ego the size of the enormous metal gauntlet he wears in combat.

Although Respawn devs have left traces of Forge’s impending arrival in the game’s files (which the studio knows the game’s lorehunters will promptly datamine the hell out of in search for answers), fans still have their doubts. Something seems off.

Then, on January 27th, the latest episode of........

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